Is 3200 the new 400?

Can't believe how clean the shots are with today's cameras... it seems like we can pretty much use 3200ISO or 6400ISO with hardly a thought given to noise management.

6D @ 3200 ISO, natural light, no NR.

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Man with the 6D I don't even use noise reduction until I get to ISO 1600-25,600 and even then I only use a value of 12 on luminance in lightroom.

Seriously the noise is not an issue. I get more hung up on the color splotching and shadow banding/crap when you have to boost exposure.

I will say this.... For posed shots like this I would typically be about 1/160-1/250 which would help even more on ISO. It's still tons cleaner the lower the ISO can get to. Why not use 2.8 glass?

well exposed 3200 vs 3200 with bad white balance (indoors) is a big difference IMO. That's a general statement. I recall shooting my old 5Dc @ISO 3200 on accident outdoors, and it looked pretty good. Indoors with a lot of dark spots, the noise really shows up. Same thing with the 6D, to a lesser degree.

3200 is more like the new 800-1600 if you want to get technical about it

another thing you may factor is that outdoor shots, even when the sun gets lower, like sunset, you can still get really good shutter speeds, giving good clean files. Shooting indoors, you're typically going to shoot 1/125-1/250, but outside 1/1000+ will give you cleaner shots with no microblur.

Yep, noise isn't much of an issue but color degradation. You can tell colors just don't look as natural. I don't shoot action so don't need high shutter speeds so I really max out at ISO 800. I shoot ISO 200 most of the time. I understand this is not always an option though but I really don't like how the colors degrade when you up your ISO (regardless of manufacturer)

your pictures are resized to 1024x683, but on normal resolution, noise pops up quickly.

As mentioned above, noise shows up in the shadows. In an outsides shot with bright colors its pretty amazing, but indoors in a shot thats mostly shadow with an illuminated subject you get noise and the beginnings of banding with older bodies.

^^Yes, exactly. And the quality of the light (spectrum) matters too. Indoor lighting is generally a narrower band and causes more noise than natural, outside light.
While noise is becoming less of an issue, DR and colors (as mentioned) are still suffering at high ISOs. We lose 2 stops of DR at 3200, and even at ISO 100 Canon isn't abundant in DR compared to Nikon. Although, at ISO 3200 the 6D is actually better than say the D800, DR at that ISO is actually very good compared to the competition.

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I use high ISO to increase shutter speeds outside with my 60D, if taking photos of runners. I might use 800 or higher there. I use higher ISOs indoors because light is low and I may want to keep shutter speeds at or above 1/60 or 1/80 for photos of people. If I can get higher shutter speeds indoors, I may boost ISO as needed. However, I try to keep ISO as low as I can outside, and will use ISO 200 or 100 whenever possible.
Why use a 6D and degrade image quality outside with ISO 3200 when ISO 400 or 200 will work.
I don't get it. I am here thinking of taking posed shots of stationary people on good light. ISO 200 will often work on this scenario.

Heya,

I use ISO outdoors, it seems to have less negative effects when using it to help with shutter speed.

Indoors, even with amazing ISO performance, I just use flash unless I cannot. Low light and high ISO can result in a mess of noise and if your exposure is off a little, it gets worse. That said, today's latest prosumer cameras, like the 6D, do very well with ISO up to a point. I think it's great to use 3200 and 6400 on the 6D as if it were only 400~800 on some older cameras. Yes there's noise, but it's minimal and cleans up easily.

Very best,

gabebalazs wrote in post #16788317
^^Yes, exactly. And the quality of the light (spectrum) matters too. Indoor lighting is generally a narrower band and causes more noise than natural, outside light.
While noise is becoming less of an issue, DR and colors (as mentioned) are still suffering at high ISOs. We lose 2 stops of DR at 3200, and even at ISO 100 Canon isn't abundant in DR compared to Nikon. Although, at ISO 3200 the 6D is actually better than say the D800, DR at that ISO is actually very good compared to the competition.

/\/\ Yes exactly

I shoot JPEG only - no PC with lightroom etc and I have set C1 on my 6D to lowest contrast and lower saturation so the files don't block up or get rancid at ISO 3200+. But yea it's amazing what these cameras can do.

If exposure is right, NR is no need for ISO 12800, if push shadow, then is another story...

Handsome family, ISO 3200 now may have low grain, but the shadows are still a issue.


Ricky

RLJSlick wrote in post #16789520
Handsome family, ISO 3200 now may have low grain, but the shadows are still a issue.


Ricky

Spot on. Shot some images last Tuesday @ ISO 3200 with my 5D2. The noise was simply unacceptable.

Here're portions of the image @ 100%:

Before any noise correction
After noise correction

Just horrible.

Scrumhalf wrote in post #16788037
Can't believe how clean the shots are with today's cameras... it seems like we can pretty much use 3200ISO or 6400ISO with hardly a thought given to noise management.

6D @ 3200 ISO, natural light, no NR.

Agreed. I was just doing some low light tests on my 7D yesterday evening using the 55-250 at f5.6.

This one was at 3200. Usual sharpening in LR. I can't see any discernable noise.

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